


The Last Magic

by Nope



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:39:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [electrumqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/gifts).



"Have at thee!" Barney bellows, brandishing a twig of an Excalibur and huffing blond bangs out of his eyes when Simon fails to respond fast enough. "Oh, c'mon, Simon. You promised."

"It's too hot," Simon moans, flopping back in the yellowing grass and throwing an arm across his face.

"Jane," Barney whines, turning immediately to her for support. "Tell him!"

"Oh, no," she says quickly, waving them away. "Don't you try and drag me into this. Anyway, Simon's right. It is too hot for anything. Here, come have some lemonade."

Barney huffs again, kicking at the ground in frustration, dust puffing up around his trainers. Jane just waggles the Thermos at him. He sits next to her, grumpily cross-legged, and she pours and hands him the plastic cup with a smile. Barney gulps, sighs, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and grins sunnily at Jane's half-hearted tutting. The sun's high enough there's barely a lick of shade in the park and not even the hint of a breeze amidst the chatter and laughter. Jane can just make out the Royal College of Physicians through a gap in the still, drooping trees, wherein her father is no doubt giving his talk before lunch in a nice, cool, cosily dim room, and she drowns her sudden jealousy in lemonade of her own.

They stay in companionable silence for a long, lazy moment and then Barney, full of irrepressible energy as ever, grabs at Simon's arm, pulling it away from his brother's face. "Let's play!"

"Sleeping," Simon says, tugging his arm free and screwing his eyes tighter closed. "Can't hear you."

Barney takes a deep breath. Jane quickly says, "Don't shout!" and he subsides.

"You can be Galahad," Barney offers Simon generously, pushing at him. "Siiiimon."

"Jane will play with you," Simon says and Barney instantly turns his eyes on her.

"Yes, lets," he says, buoyed to his feet by the idea. "You can be Guinevere and get kidnapped by Mordred and we can come and rescue you!" Excalibur whistles this way and that as he dances on the spot against invisible foes.

"I don't want to be Guinevere," Jane complains. "If I'm going to play, I want to be a knight too. I could be Percival."

"Girls aren't knights," Simon says. Jane sprinkles him with grass and giggles when he scrunches up his nose and bats at her hand like a kitten.

"Some girls are knights," she corrects. "I could be Joan of Arc." Simon opens one eye to squint at her and Jane turns her nose up. "King Arthur could have had a Sir Joan if he'd thought of it."

"If we're doing that," Simon says, opening the other eye and sitting up, "then I get to be Charlemagne."

"Yes," Barney crows. "We all travelled in time to save the present from, from, from--" He casts about.

"Pirates?" Simon suggests.

"Demons," Jane offers.

"Evil pirate demons," Barney agrees, "who are after our magical draught of cooling!" He pointedly taps the Thermos with Excalibur at Simon's blank look. "Come on!"

"We'll need to find shelter so they can't sneak up on us," Simon says, jumping to his feet and offering Jane a perfunctory hand up, eyes lit up with adventure.

She comes readily, finding them swords to match Barney's, Arthur's own. They dart breathlessly from shade to shade, fighting bushes and trees and someone's happy wagging dog. Back and forth through the park, laughing and shouting ideas to each other, they fight together against the pirates and demons and giants and dragons and evil knights and all the forces of darkness. They're chasing a particularly stubborn sprite when Jane feels eyes on them and looks up to meet baby blue eyes in a face as old as the hills, a woman in green, watching between a gap in the trees. Jane freezes, caught, sure for a moment that they are going to get yelled at for causing a fuss and yet, somehow, at the exact same time, feeling a sudden rush of joyful anticipation, like a bud ready to burst open in spring, judged and proven all at once --

Barney calls, "Look, it's father! Father!" 

The lady is lost to a whirl of greetings and, later, in the excitement of learning Gummery has hired a house for them in Cornwall for four weeks, Jane forgets all about her.

(x)

She dreams, after and often (though less and less with each passing year) of a mountain stretching up to the sky, of browning bracken and yellow-stained gorse, of springy grass tufting outcroppings of slate, and of a figure, silhouetted in tall, hawk-nosed profile against the bluest sky, lifting a hand in a salute she never returns. Will is there, sad and sombre and closed off; Bran, wild and sure; Barney, as open in sadness as in joy; Simon, swallowing, trying to be the man; all of them, hand in hand and holding hard as some great tide recedes, leaving them there, lessened and alone.

Sometimes she dreams twisting light and waves booming like a heartbeat and wakes half-expecting to smell salt and find her bed scattered with hawthorn leaves and rowan.

Once, Jane dreams of a castle, not the ruins they sometimes visit on holidays or with the school, but something near newly built and properly lived in, built with an eye for practicality more than art but impressive for all that, strong and tall and holding. She dreams a marble staircase and a pale, dark haired queen in white velvet, silks and lace, with eyes the colour of sky, one hand on the bannister and one fisted against her belly. The queen is looking down and so is Jane and below them, knights stream out of the hall, out of the courtyard, out of the castle, out and out and out, shoulders set and never looking back. The queen sighs, bent in on herself, hair falling in front of her face. Jane runs to her, dropping to one knee and taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the slender, pale fingers, lips warm against the cold metal and stone of the rings. Strong and gentle, they nudge Jane to look up.

The queen says, softly, _I loved him, truly, my husband and my king, for all I loved another._

Jane nods her belief, says, _I wish you could be happy._

The queen smiles wryly and says, _if only that were enough._

(x)

Jane grows up.

(x)

It's Will that keeps them all together. There's really no reason for them to ever meet again after that brief, uneventful summer in Wales, except they do, Will charming and guileless and smilingly cajoling them every summer and every other holiday and even, once or twice, during the school years, junior and senior and college and university, a decade come and gone with Will coming down or inviting them up, over and over until they start doing it to each other too, out of habit and fellowship and friendship worn cosy and comfortable with age.

It's not always all of them, of course, rarely to never all of them the older they get. Simon is consumed by his medical degree. Jane somehow stumbles sideways out of a piss-poor social studies programme into primary school teaching and loves the heck out of it. Bran's all over the place, doing music and history, helping out on the farm, alarming and guiding the tourists. Barney surfaces from studios in a blurry, blinking daze only when supplies run dry. Even Will misses a get-together on the rare occasion when holding down three jobs to cover the costs of Oxford proves beyond even his apparently superhuman ability to schedule around. Still, when he calls, when any of them call, they all answer, as soon as and as best as they can.

It's Will who remembers birthdays and anniversaries. It's Will who keeps track, who always has their new phone numbers, their addresses, physical and electronic, stored away in some moleskin notebook, perfectly printed in neat strokes of india ink. It's Will who Jane calls that dreadful summer with that cheating rat-bastard Hamish, Will who drives up to Aberdeen in his mottled green third-hand Morris Minor just to pick her up. It's Will who Bran calls when he's been up in the mountains so long he's forgotten how to be people again, who talks the night away and the peaky chill from his bones. It's Will who comes straight down to London when pre-exam panic somehow ends up with Simon locked inside his own car, who jimmies the lock like magic and then just sits in the passenger seat, singing along to the radio until everything's copacetic again. It's Will who teaches Barney engraving and jewel-setting and all sorts, patient as anything, heads bent together over the workbench. It's Will, their bedrock.

It's Will, Jane is greatly embarrassed to admit, who has to call them up about the show.

(x)

"I'll meet you there, then, shall I?"

"Sure," Jane says and then, confused, "where?"

"At the gallery," Will says, like this should clarify something. "No point trying to wrangle us all into one car and go all around the houses while Britain still has something approaching usable public transport, is there?"

She shifts the phone from one ear to the other, trying to get her papers and files in order. "I'm sorry -- what gallery? Is this another of your antiquing trips?"

"Well, our Barnabas's gallery, of course. It's a shame Simon's going to miss it, stuck in Tooting with all the cadavers. Not that Tooting is a particularly pleasant surround, even if you're not taking surgery -- I say, Jane, are you still there?"

"Yes, no, sorry -- I'm a little bit lost. Since when does Barney have his own gallery?"

"I suppose I should say it's the Academy's, shouldn't I?" Jane can hear Will rustle his own papers while he talks, no doubt also attending to end of school year chores. "I'm sure there are lots of other people in the finals show whose work we'll get to see too. Just think," he adds, proudly, "Barney Drew, master of the arts!"

"And you and Simon with your doctorates. Bran and I will start to feel quite left out," Jane says lightly, finding a string of paper princesses and unfolding them out, cut all the same and coloured all different, browns and bronze, reds, blues and greys.

"We would never," Will says, quite seriously, and Jane can't help laughing at that.

"Absolutely, I'll be at Barney's show." Jane manages to sound almost casual. "Just to be on the safe side, why don't you mail me the details, make sure we're all on the same page?"

"Of course," Will says, good humouredly. "I've sent them on to Bran too, just in case."

(x)

Bran plays rugby on alternating weekends "with the lads" as he says, broad as he is tall now, winking at the barmaids and flexing his muscles for a laugh. He's grown out of the shell of his father's guilt and his own proud strangeness, grown into that arrogance, into a self-confidence now more real than feigned, and Jane loves that almost as much as she finds it aggravating, slapping at his shoulder when he swoops her up and spins her around, mindless of the crowd.

"You saw me not six weeks ago, you daft boy," she says. "Put me down!"

"Sure, and that's a world away," Bran insists, setting her down and pressing a kiss against her hair. "When are you going to abandon the English for a proper country?"

"I've always liked France," Jane muses and giggles at the appropriately horrified look Bran gives her. "I'm glad you made it."

"Like Will would have it otherwise." Bran smiles, tucking a stray twist of hair back behind her ear. "Have you seen Barney, then? It's heaving in here."

"Not yet," Jane admits, looking around as if, just by mention, he will appear.

The showing is crowded, far more people than she'd expected to come just for students, serious looking academic people, dressed up to the nines and idly sipping champagne while they discussed conceptualism, abstractionism, and paradigm alignment shifts in holistic approaches to responsive multimedia. Even her mother's exhibitions had never attracted quite so much jargon-laden attention and small art-press editors could get quite purple in their prose. Jane hadn't quite plucked up her courage enough to ask the lady in the high-class linen suit if the whole thing wasn't actually a performance piece and part of the exhibits.

"I think Will said something about his work being near the stuffed owls?" she offers.

"Is that anywhere near the tent made out of underwear?" Bran asks, breezily. "I liked that one. Lots of frills."

"Don't mock," Jane says sternly, and Bran looks almost contrite for all of a breath. "I'm sure there are people here who would call your harps just a bit of string-plucking."

"It is," Bran says cheerfully. "Tell you what, then; I'll scout that-a-way and you go the other, and we'll meet up back at the dancing cats in, what, ten minutes?"

"Better make it twenty in this crowd," Jane decides and they say their au revoirs and part, the crowd parting quite unconsciously for Bran, who wanders with casual authority, and hemming Jane in in random directions until she's quite distracted.

She feels like people are watching her, tries to dismiss it as self-conscious class-induced paranoia -- her own dress is pretty enough, a barely worn second-hand gift from one of Will's sisters, but nothing designer -- but there are definite looks. Glances that should slide over her jerk back for a second before moving on. It's more disconcerting than outright staring would be, Jane thinks, until she edges her way around what appears to be a portrait of the Prime Minister made of balloons into something of a gap in the crowd and finds herself eye to unblinking eye with a weathered old man.

There's enough people still between them that she should feel no immediate threat, but there's something chilling in the unashamed intensity of his beady gaze. His skin hangs loose on his face and Jane thinks he might have been thickset once, though now he appears crazed and hollowed out, red-and-grey hair hanging out all over without care. He, too, is dressed out of place, wearing old and mismatched clothes, layers of them, wrapped up against some personal cold he seemed to feel despite the heat of people around them -- people he gave no sign of noticing, save for Jane. He is, she thinks, the quintessential mad artist.

A sudden clear memory seizes her, the sound of her mother's brushes clattering together in a jam-jar half-filled with, Jane is sure, now paint-smeary water, though she can't bring the image to mind, nor place it in context. Just the sound of paintbrushes fighting.

When it looks like the man is going to step towards her, she quickly turns away, pushing into the crowd until people -- annoyed, champagne sniffing people -- obscure him from sight. Jane finds she's breathing a little hard, makes herself move calmly until her heart stops pounding her ears, until the chill fades, until she is actually seeing the art when she looks at it instead of just amorphous, ominous shadows.

A small piece catches her eye, a disk set on a pale blue column and slowly turning, a spin painting that makes her think of old Blue Peter episodes, of her own art lessons with five year olds, though done here not in frenetic rainbow spatters but swirled in monochromatic roses, fading from pale to rich in bright interlacing spirals like some splendid, flattened marble. It's labelled "Mother". Jane supposes there's some symbolism or idea she lacks the context to properly appreciate. On a purely aesthetic level, it's warm like sun-touched stones, really quite charming; almost comforting. She feels an unexpected surge of warmth, of lightness, and is still smiling to herself when she steps around a pillar and finds her own image smiling back.

Ah, Jane thinks. Perhaps here's the reason for the looks.

It's Barney's work, done in inks with brush and that soft-nibbed fountain pen he still favours even after all these years. She remembers the art deco phase he went through, everything gone rich and streamlined, bold and ornamental. The background is a stylised castle, symmetric and sweeping; the foreground, a frame of twisting apple branches; between, the three of them recline, Arthur, Guinevere and Merlin -- except Barney has used them as subjects, so that it is Bran who is sprawled on the picnic blanket, offering the apple to an amused, regally posed Jane, the trails of her gown looping around them and around Will, bearded and bestaffed, but definitely Will, smiling down at them with handsome benevolence. Jane has to stop herself reaching out to touch the work, presented without frame to distract nor glass to cover, and startles at a chuckle at her shoulder.

"Do you think I should try growing a beard?" Will asks, giving her a goofy smile.

"I like being able to see your face," Jane says, pulling him so suddenly into a hug he has trouble getting his hands out of his pockets. There are patches on the elbows of his jacket, he's forgotten to get his hair cut again, and he smells faintly of furniture polish and something sharp though not unpleasant that she can't quite identify.

He pats her back awkwardly, the casualness in his tone not reaching his eyes. "Everything all right?"

"Spooked myself," she says, hugging him harder for a moment before letting go with a sigh and stepping back. "Bran's here. He was looking for Barney -- have you seen him?"

"I believe it's his intention to hide as far as possible from his work so that he doesn't have to talk to every Tom, Dick and Harry about it," Will says. There's an odd tone to his voice, and he's looking at the picture of them transposed into legends with something approaching trepidation.

"It's very pretty," Jane offers.

She glances at Barney's other works: a frenetic multi-media piece of trees and bones she doesn't care for; an almost photo-realistic painting of a old cottage on a mountainside that's both lovely and lonely all at once; what Jane thinks is the workbenches from Will's father's jewellery store presented in sharp chiaroscuro and lovingly meticulous detail; a dreamlike watercolour of a figure on a rise with melancholy power. If there's a central theme, she's not seeing it, but the work is good, seriously, professionally good.

"Yes," says Will, more to himself than her; then, he seems to throw off whatever spell or melancholy he has fallen under and turns back with genuine pride and affection in his eyes now. "Very pretty."

"Here's our church mouse," booms Bran, coming up out of nowhere to clap an arm across Will's shoulders, getting an amiable quirk of the lips in response. "Stop hiding in the corners, boyo. The night is young and we are pretty. Coming, Jenny-oh?"

He holds his hand out, and she takes it without hesitation.

(x)

Will, who started out stocky and stayed that way, is a breadth smaller than lanky Barney now. They nudge shoulders companionably in the corner Bran left Barney in while he came to fetch Jane and Will. He's somehow acquired bottles of beer along the way and Jane swallows an instinctive, outraged "He's too young!" when Bran hands one to a grateful Barney who, of course, is quite legally allowed to drink it these days. Will shakes Bran's offer off with a smile and an eye-roll at the ribbing that follows. Jane accepts in Will's place, elbowing Bran before he can comment, forestalling an argument on the relative alcoholic merits of Wales and England. (Scotland, she thinks, would have them both beat.)

"I'm so glad you guys are here," Barney says to Will, who ducks his head a little and smiles, a pleased flush in his cheeks. "I have to give a speech about my work later. It's scheduled. It was in the paper, photo on front page of the art section and everything." He whines, "Can't you kidnap me?"

"You'll be fine," Will says, nudging him comfortingly. "We'll all be right there."

"We'll clap no matter how terrible you are," Bran agrees, and laughs at Barney's outraged expression.

"You're brilliant. Honestly, Barney," Jane insists. "I'm not just saying that. It's really good."

"Fine art," Barney says vaguely. "It's all illustrative, you know? Figurative. It's been done. Post-post-postmodern is still in. Gregor there made a statue of his mother out of his own piss."

"Oh dear." Jane winces.

Barney nods morosely. "I think they're going to give him the Turner."

"I can get you a sheep cheap if you want to pickle one," Bran offers. 

Jane elbows him again, but Barney actually chuckles. "Been done, mate. But. Thanks."

Bran looks thoughtful. "I bet Simon could get you body parts."

"Oh, don't!" Jane pushes at him. "You're awful, you are."

Bran grins at her. "See and you grew up right violent, you did."

"I'll violent you," Jane says weakly, but the boys all laugh which is good enough.

They chat about the art for a bit -- Will likes the balloon Prime Minister which Barney harshly dismisses as cheap political humour for the common masses, then sputters and tries to apologise to Will who laughs him off -- and then about what they've been up to, which leads into their plans for the holiday. Bran insists they all come up to his for the eisteddfod, the discussion of which, through some convoluted route Jane loses track of, devolves into a heated argument between Bran and Will on, of all things, mill wheels.

"I mean, really," Jane says to Barney, "who has opinions on mill wheels?" She doesn't bother lowering her voice. When Will and Bran get like this, it's like the rest of them vanish. She's long since gotten over any jealousy, though, so she just sips her beer instead, a local microbrew she really must remember the name of. "Do people even use mill wheels any more?"

"When we were kids, we hunted treasure in watery caves and now we're the most normal people we know," Barney says, waving his beer vaguely at the others. "What happened to us?"

She can tell it's supposed to be flippant, but it comes out a little mournful. Barney is watching Will who isn't looking at him at all. Jane sets her beer down on the windowsill so she can pull Barney into a proper hug. He makes a little noise of protest but doesn't pull away at all, leaning in to her.

"We grew up," she says against his hair.

"Growing up sucks," he grumps. "Let's not do it any more."

"I don't think it works like that," Jane says, hugging him tighter for a moment before the crowd bumps up against them and she's forced to let go of Barney to let people past. "You'll be brilliant, though. Have the others -- hey, Bran. Bran! Have you seen Barney's work, yet?"

"Not up close, like," Bran says, surfacing from his argument with Will to blink owlishly at her. He really does have pretty eyes. Jane pushes Barney at him, pointedly, and Bran slings an arm over his shoulder. "Come on then, master artist. Show me your chops."

As he's steered away, Barney says, mock scandalised, "In public?!" and Bran laughs heartily.

Jane looks around to find her beer, retrieving it from the table. "I suppose... It is sad, in a way, isn't it?" she asks Will. "Not really bad, sad, but just a little sad, or-- No, I'm saying it all wrong. But I mean, once Barney's done, that's it, isn't it? He's the last of us -- we're all adults now. Our childhood has been and gone and now we have to be all responsible and sure of ourselves."

"There is a cycle to all things," Will says, indifferently, eyes old and distant. "A greater, higher Time that ordinary time reflects, over and over, from innumerable angles, ripples moving forwards and backwards. Nothing is ever really lost. It's just ... over there, waiting for its moment to come around again."

Jane blinks at him, beer raised to her lips and paused there. It takes her a moment to find her voice. "You aren't quite like the rest of us, are you, Will?"

Jane expects him to smile his usual, broad, disarmingly goofy smile, but instead he just looks oddly pensieve for a moment, before nodding vaguely. She can't decide if it's agreement or just acknowledgement that she'd spoken from someone not actually listening to her at all. She takes another sip of her beer to cover the moment. It tastes a little metallic now and she thinks maybe she won't bother remembering the name after all, though it doesn't stop her taking another sip.

"I hear Barney's going to make a speech," she says, for something to say.

Will's looks at her and it's like being interrogated for a second, like she's in one of those stupid detective movies Simon has picked up a taste for from God knows where and someone is shining a cold, hard light right in her eyes. Then it's just Will again, warm as anything. "He is. It'll be great. It's like getting Bran talking about his music. They go all..." He waves a hand vaguely. "Happy-soft. Melty."

"Melty," Jane scoffs.

"You know what I mean," Will says, patiently and Jane tries for a moment to imagine growing up in a house with five older siblings and can't quite picture it.

They head after the others, squeezing through the crowd to join them. Barney's explaining something about cusps, about being on the point between two conflicting things in perfect, unstable equilibrium which, actually, Jane thinks is a good description of herself, because the beer has suddenly gone to her head. It's stiflingly hot in the room and she can't follow what Barney's saying at all, though Will and Bran seem suitably enraptured.

"When's your speech?" she interrupts. "I think I'll grab a bit of fresh air first, if there's time."

"Oh, um." Barney blinks at his blank wrists, looks at Bran who shrugs, and then at Will, who pulls a pocket-watch out and flicks it open. Jane thinks of White Rabbits and has to suppress a giggle. "You've got time. Just a few minutes, though."

"I'll come right back," she assures them.

(x)

it's hot outside too and the pavement seems oddly rippled and rising and falling like the tide, like she's walked out on the water like some kind of holy woman although, were that the case, she's sure divine intervention would get in the way of her seasickness, not that I get seasick, Simon, I just don't like the open ocean, that's all, all that endless space and those depths, down and down so far you'd never see the light again, wouldn't even remember what light was like and, and someone is looking at her from a window, from a reflection, an old face but eyes of perfect, crystal blue, like a baby or a saint and there's a hand on her shoulder, pulling at her, and she makes a noise of complaint, pushing it away, and someone says her name, but they say it all wrong, not Jane Jenny Jana Juno and she pushes and everything goes over and there's strange small light lashed eyes and red-grey-red hair and someone's saying _go on then_ or _when if here_ all slow like they're underwater, like she's under the water with all the shining fishes going down down down down

(x)

Once, when she'd been sixteen and stupid and wild after that horrible first attempt at something with Bran which they'd both messed up and then resolutely pretended never happened at all, Jane had snuck out to a party with Simon's friends. She'd snuck a few beers, too, gagging at the taste at first, and made out with Lottie Lake ("I know, right? I should be Superman's girlfriend -- or a supervillain") who was hot and bitchy and perfectly at ease in her own skin in a way Jane never thought she would or could be. Lottie filled herself up to the brim and then some and Jane always felt like she was sloshing around inside, all loose swells and strange tides, or one of those balls Barney had had as a kid with the odd weights inside so you tried to roll them straight and they went off all over the place despite your best efforts. Lottie had laughed when Jane tried to explain this and said, "oh, honey, no, that's how _everybody_ feels; you've just got to learn to ride it out" and she'd tasted like beer and blueberries.

(x)

The distinctive sound of wheels over cattle-grids wakes her for a space of breaths, wrapped tight in dusty blankets, mouth dry and head pounding, bouncing up and down on juddering, cold metal, below her, around her, above her. She's gone again before she can think to panic -- before she can think much of anything at all.

(x)

She dreams a heavy stone-walled abbey, a low building with a simple cross above its roof. There are wide beams and hanging brasses that smell of incense, guttering torches, a small altar, candles, a taper, a dark-haired, blue-eyed queen. Her belly is round. A tall man with deep set eyes and a nose curved fiercely lays a hand on the queen's shoulder as they talk in low murmurs. He does not ever look at Jane although she feels his scrutiny anyway.

 _He will never trust me,_ the queen says with loud finality. _I have earned that; I accept it. I will not accept this. A shield for every head, isn't that how it goes, wizard? Not deserted, never deserted, but placed far and safe. For my_ son _, I am asking._

The man nods. He retreats to the door in a swirl of his midnight blue cloak, something both tired and triumphant in the set of his shoulders. Jane walks past him and he still doesn't look her way, though his hand briefly presses to her shoulder, heavy and warm. The queen goes to the altar, kneels to catch her taper from the larger candles as Jane joins her on the steps.

 _If I have learnt nothing else, it is this_ , the queen tells her. _When the moment comes, you will find the strength you need._

She puts the taper in Jane's hand and closes her own around both, guiding Jane forward.

_Remember._

The candle lights.

(x)

Jane opens her eyes.

Grey stone and slate. A low, ruined wall. A hillside, familiar but not, something known but seen from an odd angle. Her arms and legs feel heavy, move slowly. She's being carried, half dragged. They sky becomes a roof. Someone is crooning softly in Welsh. There's a jagged hole. Wood on the floor. Dust and weeds. An old farm cottage, gone to seed, Jane thinks. She can't tell what time it is. It was late, before, at the gallery and it's a different sort of dark now, thinner, greyer. Her mind feels slow and heavy as her body. Six hours gone at least, then.

Bran, she thinks, and, Barney, and tries to speak, but it comes out sploshy and mixed and "Brahn-ee".

"Hush! Hush, my love, my sweet, cariad, hush." A blur of a shape ambles into Jane's line of sight, crooning words still, English and Welsh all mixed up, and she blinks as best she can until she sees red hair and thinks, oh. Of course.

The man from the gallery seems no less mad artist in this context, more even, suitably gothic and Byronesque. He's holding a small, highly polished white stone in his hand, rolling it over and over on his palm like a nervous twitch. No, not like, Jane thinks, it is. His whole body's a nervous twitch, a jittery, anxious mess of a thing. She tries to move, feels her feet twitch and hears something rattle and roll away. The man jerks to follow the noise and comes back like he's on elastic.

"My Gwen," he sighs and Jane feels something echo in the back of her mind, echo and unfold. "I told them. I told them all. I knew you'd come back. I knew you'd be mine."

He touches her hair and she's still too dazed to flinch properly, but he still jerks his hand back, playing with that stone. Jane thinks how she had a necklace once, a thin cord on which a blue-green stone Bran had given her once had hung, how she'd liked to touch it, how she thinks this is something like that for the man but not the same. Similar, but not the same at all. He tells her things, plans for them, a farm, sheep, dogs, children, you can name them, my love, something good and proper and Welsh, and how he loves her and how she was stolen from him and he was taken but he's better now and how he saw her and knew it was a sign and how she shouldn't blame herself for anything, which, actually, she doesn't. Jane thinks she should be more scared than she is, more angry, because there is as much in him that is wild as is pathetic, but mostly she feels a sort of weary sadness, something unpleasant but necessary.

Feeling comes back in needling inches. When she can find her tongue again, she asks for water and he brings it to her, gratefully, holding a plastic bottle to her lips. The water is stale but cool and she sips it slowly until her throat loosens and her belly settles. When she can turn her head, she does, though there is little to see. He sings her something flowery in a cracked, aching voice. She sees what she kicked earlier, a small, brown, plastic, medicine bottle. She can't read the name on the prescription but she recognises the name. Anti-anxiety medication. Tranquilisers. Of course. That's good, well, it's not good, not really, but they're just pills. They'll wear off and she'll be fine again. She'll be okay.

"I'll do it properly this time," the man says. "I'll fight for you and Rowlands won't interrupt and that Davies will be done for and you'll love me. I'll write you love songs and you can play them on your harp." He looks suddenly guilty. "I didn't mean to drop it in the lake, I didn't, but I'll get a boat, I will, and dredge it whole if I have to, see?"

Davies, Jane thinks, and tries to say Bran, and "Owen" and, who are you to say these names, to know them?

"Don't you say that name," the man spits. "Like his guilt makes him better than me. No, no, I'll do it right, you'll see. I'll be a good father to your little boy, Gwen, I will. Don't you fret none--"

"Jane," Jane says. With the needles comes pain. She catches it with her teeth. With pain comes movement. Pain is good. She can use it. She makes herself sit up, meets his confusion with her own cool glare. "My name is Jane." 

He giggles -- actually giggles! -- and paws at her the way one might pat an effusive puppy. "You can't lie to me, love. I know who you are, Guinevere. I've always known."

Jane knows too, now. She can feel it blossom inside her mind, burst into bloom, quick as silver. She knows all the stories and worse. She remembers. Oh, what she remembers. Pain is good, she tells herself. Just for now, pain is good. Hold on.

"It's Jane," she repeats. "Just Jane. Please--"

"And I don't blame you," he says, earnestly, over her, "not for anything. I'll love you, and you'll love me, just like you would have done before."

"She would never have loved you," Jane says. 

"No," he insists, his hand closed tight around the white pebble like a fist. "It was Owen -- Owen twisted her, twisted you, love, but you--"

"No," Jane interrupts, pushing herself up and back, against the wall, as away from him as she can get in this small space. "Not either of you. She was already in love, see, in love with both of _them_ , her knight and her king, and it got them all killed in the end, just as it saved them too. She could never have loved you."

"Don't you say that," he says, and the anger is back in his eyes, dark and deep, the anger and the yearning and the crazed disappointment. "We were-- We were true. She -- you -- she, she would have-- We were _epic_. Told of in verse and song, down through the ages, truth and love and redemption--"

Jane shakes her head. "I'm sorry," she hears herself say and is only slightly surprised to mean it. "I'm so sorry, because you didn't lose anything, you didn't even have anything to lose and -- and because I'm not Gwen, I never was, and I never will be."

He makes an inarticulate noise of rage, lifts his hand, the hand with the stone, to strike her and then gapes openly when she flinches away, somehow, even now, blindsided by her fear. They hang there for some suspended, breathless time. Then his face breaks and his arm falls away and so does he, away from her and in on himself. Rasping, whining sobs escape him with effort. Jane is wobbly, woozy, but she can move. She can pull herself up the wall and get her feet under her. He doesn't move from his spot.

She picks up the pill bottle. The address on the prescription label is Aberystwyth, a care facility. The date is years away but the bottle is half full and she thinks maybe she is only one to have taken any for a long, long time and how it could be that no-one would notice, and she's sorry for that, too, for all the things that she knows and remembers and which are already slipping away again.

A raven cries outside the window.

Some instinct pushes her back against the wall so that she's out of the way when the door explodes in off its hinges and disgorges Bran, Barney and Will into the room. Bran is towering, thundering, a poker of all things in his hand like a sword; Will is tight-lipped rage; Barney is frantic, eyes going everywhere, seeing everything. "Jane!"

Jane stares at them. "How did you ever--"

"Did he hurt you?" Bran asks. "Did he--"

"I told you," Barney says over him, "I told you, the old farm cottage, just like in the painting, see?"

And Will says, low and cutting through them both, "Ware!"

"You," the man growls out, eyes fixed on Bran. He comes up like he's on strings, pulled up and dangling. "You--" He can't seem to get any words out past that, just spitting it, "You!"

"Caradog Prichard," Bran says, commanding as anything. "You'll be wanting to stand still, if there's any sense left in you."

"Let's just get Jane out of here," Barney says urgently, edging around them to grab at Jane and cling to her. "The police can sort it all out. Come on. Please, Will."

"All right," Will says, face softening.

He takes a step towards Jane. Bran starts to lower his poker. Caradog growls and lunges. There's fury in it, but no force. Bran just brings the poker the rest of the way down and Caradog goes down too, on elbows and knees. The white stone falls from his hand and Will's eyes go right to it and Jane cries "No!" just a fraction too late as Will's hand jabs out, fingers stiff and spread and everything stops.

Bran is frozen mid-step. Barney is still against her shoulder. Caradog, rising from the floor, is caught mid-snarl. There's no sound of sheep or wind or wings. The raven is silent.

"I should have known," Will says, and it's his voice but not, deeper, resonant, the voice his usual voice is but a weak echo of. "The warestone of the Grey King. I should have seen it, as Barney did, however unconsciously. The signs were all there. Stupid watchman, not thinking of the loose ends."

"No," Jane insists. "Will, whatever you're thinking, no."

His hollow, ancient gaze swings her way. "You should be frozen," he says, then clearly dismisses this as unimportant. "I have to, Jane. It's happening all over again, can't you see it? But we're here, right at the beginning--"

"It's the end," Jane says, moving between Will and Caradog. "It's over, Will."

"You don't understand," Will says and there's a cold, hard light in his eyes. "This is how the Dark gets in. One missed worm and everything rots. Stand aside."

"Don't you dare!" Jane yells, mad now, at just, at just everything, at the whole stupidity of the situation, of everybody clinging to things that have gone.

"I'll move you if I have to," Will says, but there's more of himself there now, a fading of his glare, an uncertainty in his voice.

"You have to," Jane says, voice trembling. "You'll have to, Will, because this isn't right."

"There are patterns," Will says desperately, "a, a, a _cycle_ \--"

"No! No. He's just a man, a crazy, broken man, nothing more. He's just a man, Will. Not Melwas or Mardoc or Mordred, come to sully the queen. He's just him. I'm not Guinevere, I'm not -- and you're not bloody Merlin!"

Will says "oh" in a very small voice, and he looks so sad it breaks her heart.

She says, in her own quiet voice, sick with the fresh truth of it, "Gummery's gone, Will."

"You remember?"

"For now," she nods. "Enough of it."

"But that just makes it worse," he says brokenly. "I'm the last of them, Jane. They've all gone and now the Dark is--"

"The Dark went out of Time with them too, Will," Jane reminds him. "That was the whole point of it. One last battle for us all. You already won." He shakes his head, looking away. She does too, sees the pebble, and picks it up, offering it to him. "I don't know what you think this is, Will, but look at it. It's just a rock. Look, Will!"

He does, eyes widening a little. Tremulously, he reaches out to take it from her hand, touching it gingerly like he expects it to be hot.

"The warestones of the Dark cleave to the earth at the touch of the Light," he says, wonderingly, turning it this way and that in his hand.

"It's just a pebble," Jane says. "It's probably been here for years."

"Yes," Will says softly. "For so many years."

Everything is quiet, still. They could be the only two people in the entire world and, once, she might even have enjoyed that, but no longer. That too she has grown out of.

"The Lady was right. It is better to forget. Not us," she adds hurriedly as his face goes horribly blank, "this. All the blood and stories, the big myths with their roles, their kings and queens and wizards but no-- No people. We're people, Will. You have to let us be people, good or bad."

"I know," Will says unhappily, and she goes to him at that and hugs him tight and then there are other arms around her, Barney's and Bran's, and everything's all right.

A clatter of wings from outside heralds the raven's departure.

Bran secures Caradog, gently as he can, and they go out together, blinking in the light. The sun has risen over the mountains.

"I've got a whole bevy of honey-cakes down on the farm," says Bran eventually. "I mean, since we're up here anyway. Reward, for saving the day and all."

Jane kisses his cheek, and loops her arms through his and Will's.

"Perfect," she says.

And Barney, who had least of them lost that bubbling wonder of childhood, throws back his head and whoops their laughing way down the mountain.

(x)

There are police, of course, and Jane has to make statement upon statement until her throat is sore from telling of it. Afterwards, she finds Barney looking pensive and says, "It's not your fault, you know."

"It was that article about me that set him off, though," Barney says. "That picture of you and Bran, and that painting I did of the cottage, all set up for him like a curse. He was already obsessed with Guinevere -- with Gwen."

"See? Already obsessed, before you," she says gently. "And you're been a nut for Arthur since you could toddle, before any of this. You shouldn't blame yourself. You shouldn't blame anybody for anything. And you came and saved me, you and Bran and Will."

"But still--"

"But nothing," Jane insists and then, smiling, "though if you really must make up for your guilt, you can do another picture of us for me. All of us, this time, you and Will and Simon and Bran and me."

Barney's cheeks redden a little, but he smiles. After a moment, it becomes a grin and he says, "You can be Joan of Arc this time," and dodges her slap, laughing.

They go back to Bran's and there are honey-cakes indeed and Jane makes them all sit, and goes to make the tea in Bran's little kitchen. It's a beautiful day and she can't help stepping out into it while she waits, shading her eyes with one hand as she looks up, barely a cloud, the sky so blue and the mountains clear and everywhere the sound of birds and sheep and grass in the warm breeze.

It's all but gone now. Gummery faded to warm nostalgia, train and tree gone entirely. Think on this and all is mended, Jane thinks, that you have but slumbered here... Still, she remembers them, her boys, her circle. She remembers the most important part, and that's enough. Not for her the grand epics, but a quiet life of simple satisfaction. For they are neither of the Light nor the Dark, neither of the High nor the Wild, and whatever magic they have is mortal -- but no less important for all that.

For a breath, Jane thinks she hears something like bells, delicate and rippling; then the kettle whistles and, smiling, she goes inside to make the tea.


End file.
